The cocktails that look like canapes

The cocktails that look like canapes

The cocktails that look like canapes

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cocktails

Mango vodka caviar

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cocktails

Campari & Soda candyfloss

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cocktails

Bohemian Breakfast

Mango vodka caviar

Not since I was five have I taken a toothpaste tube and squeezed its contents directly into my mouth — and I discovered then that it was rather unpleasant. So last Thursday evening, when my cocktail arrived at the table in a foil tube and I was told: "Shake it, pierce the top and drink", I was apprehensive. But then this was my seventh cocktail and among the previous drinks had been Japanese Light Lunch (vodka three ways — soaked into real cucumber pieces on a cocktail stick, made into "noodles" on a ceramic spoon and turned into a wasabi sauce), and a Campari and Soda, whereby the Campari came in the form of candyfloss. By now, nothing should have been able to surprise me.

These liquid canapés — or edible cocktails — are the creations of Paul Tvaroh, Czech mixologist and owner of Shoreditch bar Lounge Bohemia. Currently he is providing an 11-course cocktail-tasting menu at chef Nuno Mendes's supper club, The Loft Project, on Hackney's Kingsland Road (the "chef in residence", Ben Greeno, also provides 11 food courses to follow the cocktail canapés so you don't fall off your chair).

"Cocktails are served in a way that is totally unexpected," says Tvaroh of his "manipulative mixology". "There's loads of creativity, play and games behind the cocktails." To prove it, he later pours flaming ham-infused bourbon into a jug and then cracks in an egg (which turns out to be filled with condensed milk) to create his Bohemian Breakfast cocktail.

"Chemically, alcohol isn't a great substance to play with, so you have to push the boundaries and use other helpful chemicals to create whatever you want," says Tvaroh. "It comes down to special equipment or ingredients, similar to those used in molecular gastronomy. We borrow the techniques from chefs and try to reproduce them using alcohol." In other words, Tvaroh is the Heston Blumenthal of the drinks world.

Another pioneer of this trend is JJ Goodman, mixologist at the London Cocktail Club, who won top prize in Raymond Blanc's BBC2 programme The Restaurant, with what he calls his "gastronomic mixology" — matching cocktails to food.

His creations include the Liquid Chaos, a drink with 100 flavoured liquid balls, which look like floating caviar and burst in your mouth so that every sip tastes slightly different. At his new restaurant with Blanc he will be creating dishes that are part-food, part-alcohol. The Beetroot Assiette, for example, is a plate of beetroot salad, beetroot soup and a beetroot cocktail using bourbon, cranberry, lemon, parsley and, of course, beetroot. "You have to keep taking cocktails to the next level — we're demonstrating that it's not just wine that can be matched with food," he says.